Industrial Minerals & Functional Fillers for Plastic & El

Industrial minerals and functional fillers are broken down and carefully prepared, mostly from natural rocks typically found above ground and more rarely underground. This usually includes pre-sorting processes in which a targeted enrichment of the desired minerals and a reduction of the accessory minerals take place. The subsequent grinding steps guarantee uniform particle size distributions, which are absolutely essential to many purposes.

However, there is still a very long way to go before exhausting all the possibilities. With certain products, thermal processing steps or chemical deposition processes follow, which lead to modifications of the mineral structure or to an additional cleaning, and then ultimately to changed functionalities.

Certain natural, as well as some modified mineral products can then be selectively surface-treated in order to achieve improved bonding in the polymer matrix.

In this way, natural stones yield high-performance fillers which, thanks to their particle shape, size and structure, guarantee uniquely improved characteristics in polymers and elastomers, and often on very attractive terms. This is why we like to call them “functional fillers.”

The following products are particularly suitable for use in plastics and elastomers:

Even at low concentrations of 3-5%, micaceous iron oxide can increase thermal conductivity by up to 50%. That is enough to reduce the cycle time of polyolefin in particular by up to 30% (with thick-walled components). Thanks to the low quantity needed, this has a minimal effect on the mechanical properties.

At the right concentration, thermal conductivity can be increased more than tenfold. To achieve the highest possible packing density, different qualities can be combined with different grain sizes. One key advantage is the retention of electrical insulating properties.